


love enough to break a heart

by toujours_nigel



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 08:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3971776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But he loitered in his tent instead of coming to bed; then put a dark cloak on and went out. I saw him throw a fold about his head; he didn't want it seen where he was going, though he must have known I'd guess. He was not very long away. They must have patched it up, after a fashion; one could tell that after. But if it had gone as he wished, he'd not have finished the night as he did with me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love enough to break a heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aureliano_B](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aureliano_B/gifts).



> Written very ineptly to the prompt Kiss with a Fist. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SmxVCM39j4)  
> Title from 'These are the Things that make a Man' (http://home.comcast.net/~earlwajenberg/onlinestorage/TheThingsThatMakeAMan.html)
> 
> Enjoy, baby girl.

Ptolemy was waiting outside the tent for him when he went back. Almost it might have been school again, the mountains and cool forests of Mieza instead of the rolling horse-hills outside Ekbatana. The flickering darkness of the torches hid much of age, forgave much, lit unerringly upon Ptolemy’s eyes and the veiling shrewdness of them.

“I haven’t killed Eumenes,” he said. “If you came to offer help to hide the body.”

“Don’t joke about it, any of your men might take it upon themselves to rid you of him. If Alexander had not ended it when he did, it might have come close. Your young hot-heads had their hands on sword-hilts.”

“It is at an end. Will you come in and have a cup of wine with me?”

“Any other night. I wanted simply to see you. Thais will be uneasy if I linger.”

“You see me as I was made by Alexander, to serve him. So I shall. There’s no need for you to be uneasy on my behalf. Nor about my hot-heads, Xanthos knows well enough to hold them in check, no matter the violence to their emotions.” He forced a smile, said again, “Will you come in? I thought of Mieza, seeing you. It is this land that has changed him so sorely, all these people treating him as the next thing to a god. He forgets his friends and sees only those who flatter him.”

“Ah, come. When would Philip have let any man speak so to him?”

“Parmenion. Antipatros. Lagos your father, or mine, at dinner. Any peasant from the back-hills in open court. He would not have interfered in the private quarrels of any of his men. To think a day would come that I would think lesser of the son than of the father.”

“Philip stopped enough mouths, many with clay. Sleep now. In the morning come to me and we will go riding.”

They grasped hands, and in parting Ptolemy said, “Fifteen years and you still cannot hold your tongue.”

 

Inside was a little rebellion. All his men, hand-picked, horse-lords from the hills about Pella and from steep Orestid country who rode by his side and ate at his table and drank his wine. Brothers in blood to his nephews, some, and a few to the men wed to his sisters’ daughters by one husband or another. A few men of his age or older followed him for the love their fathers had borne his, but most for the love they bore him.

Hotheads, all, and Xanthos at the head of them, smiling over a brimming cup. “We thought General Ptolemy might yet desire to share wine with us, and words.”

“Ptolemy’s too canny to be caught among you fools tonight. Have you all been waiting for me?”

They looked back at him in a solid mass, the youngest beginning to shift about and lose confidence. Alketas the Black tipped his head back on his powerful shoulders and said, “We are what you have made us, all here. We have been tied to you longer than to this company. We go where you go.”

The lamps flickered worse in the gust of agreement that blew about the tent, casting great shadows about the faces of the men. A dozen there, not counting Xanthos; each a captain of cavalry and Alketas the chief engineer.

“Where would I go but where Alexander bids me? And so must you all. No private quarrel is worth the king’s displeasure.”

“We do not mean treachery to Alexander,” Alketas said, as easily as he might have said, _we need more wood for this bridge_ , “but if you go home to Macedon or to some Persian satrapy you will need men of bright honour.”

“For men who love me you foresee grave misfortunes for me. No, my lords. I shall stay as I am, and bow my head to the king’s commands, and so must you. It is no terrible thing to smile at a man who irks us.”

Balakros said, “You look at Eumenes as though you could tear his flesh with your teeth.”

“If I had come upon him in the desert I might have. He would have been more tender than the mules. Come, come, we are all angry yet. To your beds and you will know sense when you have slept your rage away. Kritolaos, Balakros, Timandros, Tlepolemos, wait on me after noon-tide; the rest of you keep away from Eumenes’ men and bid your men do the same. Xanthos, wait yet a moment.”

Now the boy looked abashed. Hephaistion took him by the hair and shook him, gentle as a wolf with an yearling cub. “Fool of a boy. I trust you to hold them together when I’m not around, and this is what you do. Can you think what stories might be carried to Alexander’s ears? And to think I nearly brought Ptolemy in amongst you; rumour would hardly have spared him.”

“They are older than I am, some older than you. And are there laws now forbidding us from speaking one to the other? You are our kin, were we to leave you this day without showing you our esteem?”

“Thetima and Chryse will have my throat if I let aught happen to you boys. Where is Menesthes?”

“Gambling. Not with Eumenes’ men. Deinokratis is off-duty, and we thought it best if someone kept an eye on the pages. They are wooed too easily into conspiracy.”

“Thus speaks the old man of two and twenty. At least you have the sense to keep your brother out of things. No, you have done well.” Under his hand the muscles bunched and relaxed. “Were you afraid?”

“I have been the king’s page since I was sixteen,” Xanthos said, “and hearing stories of him from you and from Menesthes for years before that. Never have I seen him so furious save in battle, and scarcely then. Yes, uncle, I was afraid.”

“As was I, underneath the anger,” he promised, and embraced Xanthos, leaning a little into the coiled strength of the arms about him. “I never thought he would say such things to me. From boyhood I’ve been with him.”

“He cannot have meant them,” Xanthos said fervently, and tightened his hold. “He would not send you to your death.”

“It is what a king does, boy,” he said, pulling away till they were clasping hands. “Ptolemy and I are riding to see the horses tomorrow. Come yourself and bring Menesthas and your brother. Now go.”

 

Going out of the tent he nearly collided with a black-cloaked man coming in, and scrambled away. Once within, Alexander let the cloak pool about his feet and pushed past Hephaistion into the private part of the tent, scattering servants, and took possession of the bed. The guard looked in, once, and retreated precipitately. By morning they would be gossiping; it was one way of angering Eumenes he had not thought of. But he could not bear to be loved just now.

He extinguished the seven lights of the silver lamp, and took a single taper into the close darkness with him. Alexander’s face was in shadow, but his hair caught the little light and shone. He had drawn a fold of the cloak about his head in coming.

“They’ll know you’re here,” he said, voice pulled into intimacy by the bed. All their quarrels had been matters for daylight, begun and finished before the day ended.

“I only wanted not to be stopped,” Alexander said, and moved to give him space. There were two daggers hidden among the bedding, and Alexander now could have one in his hand in a blink. _His_ dagger, in Hephaistion’s bed, beneath _his_ pillows. There were men fighting alongside them who had not been born when he had first kissed Alexander, and they had come to this. Promises of execution in bright day, and quarrels in the dark.

He sat down, as suddenly as though the legs had been cut away from him. “What will you do, if you have to kill me? If you have to watch them stone me. Could you do it?”

“Do not make me,” Alexander said. He sounded drunk, though they had all three barely rinsed wine around their cups before pouring in water.

“I have been made to serve you in all ways. Perhaps you could watch. It would be nearly like battle, after all, though neither of us could fight. Would you throw the first stone or would you let Eumenes? It’s a slow death, unless a stone splits the skull early. It would be a kindness to let spears do the work instead, though the men might have sport with them as well as stones.”

“Stop,” Alexander said. “Hephaistion, stop now. I would not have you die.” He grasped Hephaistion’s shoulder, turned him half about. “Not by spear and not by stone and not by my judgment.”

“If Eumenes and I quarrel again and he can prove me the instigator, by your word I die. You swore it today. Will you make of yourself a liar?” He brought up his hands to break the hold, found it impossible. “What have you come for?”

“Do you ask reasons now from me for love?” He was beautiful in the darkness; his eyes wild and drowning dark, his hands clutching Hephaistion close, dragging him across the bed. A desperate strength. When they had been young, it had been Hephaistion, always, who had longed for love, and in the years between Ekbatana and Pella, much had changed but not that.

“You have a boy in your bed who asks no questions and offers no refusals, my king. Why look to your generals for that? And one who has caused you such displeasure. Let go of me.”

“If I wanted Bagoas, I would have stayed with him. Do you think it gladdened me to say such things to you? A king must do what needs to be done.”

He struggled in earnest now, a furious fight in the dark with both of them anxious not to hurt the other, and he frantic to get free. They ended still tangled, Alexander pinned to the bed and glaring, grasping Hephaistion by the knees.

“Will you touch my beard also, wring more promises from me? Come, see sense. You have my obedience and you have my oath. What more can you demand?”

“Let me stay. It has been too long.” The stern grip turned caressing, nearly sly. Between his thighs he felt Alexander’s body slackening from the tension of the fight. “Let me stay and tomorrow we will talk, and be friends again.”

“If you stay it will be all over camp that you favour me beyond Eumenes and that you do it because you’re my boy. Come to me tomorrow, my love, let all the tempers cool.”

“Even yours?”

The hands had stilled mercifully, but close enough to their goal that he had to surrender to Alexander or admit defeat by relinquishing his hold. “I have known you,” he said, whispering in the dark, “since we were thirteen. I swore to go to war with you then, I held you while you robbed Nike’s wreath. I have known always that I would die by your side, and never thought it might be by your hand. I ought have known. I tortured Philotas for you, I broke his proud body between my hands. He was your friend from childhood, too. You are king above us all, and you have been too long in Persia not to know what it means. In Macedon a man is allowed his private quarrels without the king intruding upon them. Your father Philip first broke with that, forced peace upon his lords: Leonnatos’ father and mine, Lagos and Agaios. Attalos and Pausanias. I shall know better than to drink with Eumenes.”

“Hephaistion!” The violence in the voice rang wrong against the quick kindness of the hands that pulled him down and smothered him against skin. “If you died by my hand,” Alexander said, his hands still trembling, dancing over Hephaistion’s shoulder, his hip, into the folds of his chiton to rest against his heart, “I would follow you into Haides before the day was done, before Charon ferried you into the iron land.”

“And Ptolemy would follow us down to have the pleasure of rending our flesh.” He laughed a little. “I shall not quarrel with Eumenes. It is at an end. And I shall not blame my friend for what the king needed to do. Tomorrow we will be friends again, you and I, and laugh together. But tonight I must be alone, or we shall fight.”


End file.
